4. Chapter 14- Theories of Personality Flashcards
What is personality?
Personality- a distinctive and relatively stable pattern of behaviour, thoughts, motives, and emotions that characterizes an individual
Trait- a characteristic of an individual, describing a habitual way of behaving, thinking, or feeling
What is psychoanalysis?
What are psychodynamic theories?
Psychoanalysis- theory of personality and a method of psychotherapy developed by Sigmund Freud; emphasizes unconscious motives and conflicts
Psychodynamic theories- theories that explain behaviour and personality in terms of unconscious energy dynamics within the individual
What are the 3 systems of personality?
Id- in psychoanalysis, the part of personality containing inherited psychic energy, particularly sexual and aggressive instincts
Ego- in psychoanalysis, the part of personality that represents reason, good sense, and rational self-control
Superego- in psychoanalysis, the part of personality that represents conscience, morality, and social standards
What is libido?
What’s are defence mechanisms?
In psychoanalysis, the psychic energy that fuels the life or sexual instincts of the id
Defence mechanisms- methods used by the ego to prevent unconscious anxiety or threatening thoughts from entering consciousness
What are the 5 primary defence mechanisms?
- Repression- when a threatening idea, memory or emotions in blocked from consciousness
- Projection- when a person’s own unacceptable or threatening feelings are repressed and attributed to someone else
- Displacement- when people direct their emotions toward things or animals or people
- Regression- when a person reverts to a previous phase of psychological development
- Denial- when people refuse to admit that something unpleasant is happening
What are psychosexual stages?
What is the Oedipus complex?
Psychosexual stages- in freuds theory, the idea that sexual energy takes different forms as the child matures; the stages are oral, anal, phallic (oedipal), latency, and genital
Oedipus complex- in psychoanalysis, a conflict occurring in the phallic (Oedipal) stage, in which a child desires the parent of the other sex and views the same-sex parent as a rival
What is collective unconscious?
What are the archetypes?
Collective unconscious- in jungian theory, the universal memories and experiences of humankind, represented in the symbols, stories and images that occur across all cultures
Archetypes- universal, symbolic images that appear in art, myths, stories, and dreams; to Jungians, they reflect the collective unconscious
What is the object relations school?
A psychodynamic approach that emphasizes the importance of the infants first two years of life and the baby’s formative relationships, especially with the mother
What are the 3 scientific failings of psychodynamic theories?
- Violating the principle of falsifiability- impossible to disconfirm or confirm
- Drawing universal principle from the experiences of a few atypical patients- Freud generalizes from a few individuals and applies it to all human beings
- Basing theories of personality development on the retrospective accounts of adults- worked backwards and created theories based off of themes
What are objective tests (inventories)?
Standardized questionnaires requiring written responses; they typically include scales on which people are asked to rate themselves
What is factor analysis?
A statistical method for analyzing the intercorrelations among various measures or test scores; clusters of measures or scores that are highly correlated are assumed to measure the same underlying trait or ability (factor)
What are the big five robust factors that underlie clusters of correlated items from factor analysis of traits?
- Extroversion versus introversion- extent to which people are outgoing or shy
- Neuroticism (negative emotionality) versus emotional stability- extent a person suffers anxiety and tendency to feel negative emotions
- Agreeableness versus antagonism- extent to which people are good natured or irritable, etc.
- Conscientiousness versus impulsiveness- degree to which people are responsible or undependable etc.
- Openness to experience versus resistance to new experiences- extent to which people are curious, imaginative, questioning etc.
What are the 3 ways researchers measure genetic contributions to personality?
Studying personality traits in other species
Studying the temperaments of human infants and children
Doing heritability studies of twins and adopted individuals
What are temperaments?
Physiological dispositions to respond to the environment in certain ways; they are present in infancy and in many nonhuman species and are assumed to be innate
Temperaments include:
Reactivity- How excitable, arousable, responsive baby is
Soothability- how easily the baby is calmed
Positive and negative emotionality
What is heritability?
A statistical estimate of the proportion of the total variance in some trait that is attributable to genetic differences among individuals within a group
What is reciprocal determinism?
In social-cognitive theories, the two-way interaction between spectators of the environment and aspects of the individual in the shaping of personality traits
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What is a nonshared environment?
Unique aspects of a person’s environment and experience that are not shared with family members
Winning lead in school okay might make you wanna be an actor
Being bullied might make you see yourself as weak
What
What are the 3 kinds of evidence that crumble the belief that personality is primarily determined by how parents treat their children?
- The shared environment of the home has little of any influence on most personality traits
- Few parents have a single child-rearing style that is consistent over time and that they use with all their children
3 even when parents try to be consistent in the way they treat their children, their may be little relation between what they do and how the children turn out
What is culture?
A program of shared rules that governs the behaviour of members of a community or society and a set of values, beliefs, and attitudes shared by most members of that community
What are individualist cultures?
What are collectivist cultures?
Individualist- cultures in which the self is regarded as autonomous, and individual goals and wishes are prized above duty and relations with others
“I am a psychologist, I am out going, agreeable, and ambitious”
Collectivist- cultures in which the self is regarded as embedded in relationships, and harmony with ones group is prized above individual goals and wishes
“I am the son of a farmer, descended from 3 gens of storytellers from my moms side”
What us humanist psychology?
A psychological approach that emphasizes personal growth, resilience, and the achievement of human potential
What was Abraham Maslow’s view on psychology?
Said it ignored many of positive aspects of life (joy laughter love)
Said the traits most important to personality were not the big five (big five were qualities of self actualized person)
What was Carl Rogers view on psychology?
What is unconditional positive regard?
How you behave depends on your subjective reality (not external reality)
To become fully functioning people Rogers said we need unconditional positive regard- love or support given to another person with no conditions attached
Most are raised with conditional positive regard
“I will love you if you behave well”
What is Rollo May’s view on psychology?
Belief in free will
Emphasized inherently difficult and tragic aspects of human condition (loneliness, anxiety, etc)
May brought existentialism- a philosophical approach that emphasizes the inevitable dilemmas and challenges of the human existence
Free will carries a price in anxiety and despair
